September 17, 2018

Kavanaugh’s Accuser Comes Forward

Editor’s note: We were overwhelmed by the positive response to our Friday morning reflections! Thank you all so much for your feedback and words of encouragement.

If you’ll bear with us, we’ve put together a short 4-minute survey to help us better understand our readers and learn how we can serve you better. Full disclosure: we’re also hoping your responses will spark some lightbulbs as we redesign our website and come up with a new tagline. (Burst your media bubble one 5-min read at a time is quite a mouthful!) The survey is completely anonymous so please don’t hold back!

On Friday, 65 women penned a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, stating, “We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983. For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect. We strongly believe it is important to convey this information to the Committee at this time.” (Judiciary.senate.gov)

Both sides agree that Senator Feinstein should not have delayed disclosing the allegations.

“What Dianne Feinstein has done to Brett Kavanaugh is unconscionable. She sat on a vague, anonymous accusation for months, refused to question Kavanaugh about it, refused to demand further substantiation, and then actually had the audacity to publicly refer it to law enforcement without providing a single shred of evidence that the referral was warranted.” (National Review)

From the Left

The left is calling for the nomination to be delayed while the allegations are investigated.

From the Right

The right is critical of the timing of the allegations and does not believe the nomination should be delayed unless more evidence comes to light.

“It is... imperative to do a more thorough background investigation to determine if this is an isolated accusation from decades ago or whether Kavanaugh has a record as a sexual predator. While egregious misconduct such as attempted rape should disqualify anyone from the nation’s highest court, we should be careful about interpreting a single ambiguous incident from high school in the worst possible light."

Regarding the letter from Kavanaugh’s high school classmates, it “is not evidence that he didn’t do what one woman says he did. In fact, it’s a frankly strange defense to put forward... The false logic of their argument is best expressed by writer Emily Nunn on Twitter, who joked, ‘Ted Bundy was innocent. I know this because he never killed me.’"

Quartz

Some point out that “the Kavanaugh nomination will... be assessed by people all of whom voted for the presidential candidate who confessed to grabbing women... It will be not be easy to ascertain what happened all those years ago... But we can judge the judges—and they are the wrong men in the wrong job at the wrong time."

The Atlantic

“If Mr. Kavanaugh is confirmed without further investigation... [he] will be dogged by these accusations throughout his entire, likely decades-long service on the court. And that will lead some to question the legitimacy not just of his appointment but of the court as an institution — especially when it decides knotty social and political issues by a 5-4 vote... Christine Blasey Ford deserves to be heard. And the judge deserves a chance to clear his name."

New York Times

From the Right

The right is critical of the timing of the allegations and does not believe the nomination should be delayed unless more evidence comes to light.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) stated, “If... Committee Democrats took this claim seriously, they should have brought it to the full Committee’s attention much earlier. Instead, they said nothing during two joint phone calls with the nominee in August, four days of lengthy public hearings, a closed session for all committee members... [or] in more than 1,300 written questions.”

“There seem to be precious few men who engage in serious sexual misconduct just once. If this was the kind of behavior that Kavanaugh engaged in, then look for more people to come forward. If no one does, however, we’re left with a sole claim, made by an opposing partisan... that Kavanaugh strenuously denies, that lacks any contemporaneous corroboration, and that is contradicted in material respects by her therapist’s own notes."

National Review

“The Senate Judiciary Committee was able to produce scores of women who went to school with Kavanaugh to attest to his character, literally overnight. While character witnesses alone would not exonerate evidence or corroborate witness accounts, in the absence of any independent verification, they prove a powerful defense."

“The decision to move forward with the nomination is ultimately a political one. On one hand, it's tough to say that Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court should be unilaterally derailed over an unconfirmed 35-year-old allegation made by a Democrat at the most politically opportune moment—this is the weaponization of #MeToo for partisan political purposes. I'm not naive, I see that. On the other hand, Republicans were taking advantage of political opportunity as well: the opportunity to find a replacement for Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy before the midterm elections.”